{"id":1186,"date":"2010-05-07T13:03:13","date_gmt":"2010-05-07T17:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/?p=1186"},"modified":"2021-12-15T21:14:19","modified_gmt":"2021-12-16T02:14:19","slug":"maryland-coverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2010\/05\/07\/maryland-coverage\/","title":{"rendered":"Maryland papers highlight how rural Somerset County will benefit from prison count bill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, both The Capital<\/a> and the Baltimore Sun<\/a> published excellent pieces on a new Maryland law. The first-in-nation law will improve fairness and accuracy of the Census data used for redistricting purposes.<\/p>\n

\nBoth pieces (one article, one editorial), point out an important part of what this bill seeks to rectify\u2014the fact that Somerset County, which is 42% African-American, has yet to elect an African-American County Commissioner in its history. <\/p>\n

Previous to a 1986 lawsuit that intended to correct a vote dilution problem in Somerset County, the county had \u201cat-large\u201d voting, meaning that there were no districts. Despite having a large population of African-Americans, Somerset County was unable to elect a Black commissioner, because the voting power of the African-American community was essentially diluted by the majority-white voters. <\/p>\n

The lawsuit was settled, and Somerset County was divided into districts, yet still not one African-American commissioner was elected. Why? Because shortly after the lawsuit was settled, a new prison opened in what was intended to be the majority African-American district, splitting the actual African-American population into two districts. Again African-Americans were unable to draw an effective majority-African American district. The passing of this bill will finally make it possible for Somerset County to elect its first African-American commissioner. <\/p>\n

While some legislators with prisons in their districts opposed the bill, fearful of the shifts it might cause, some legislators with prisons in their districts supported it. <\/p>\n

The Capital<\/a> reports:<\/p>\n

[Joseline] Pena-Melnyk and other District 21 state representatives – Del. Ben Barnes, Del. Barbara Frush and Sen. Jim Rosapepe, all Democrats who voted for the bill, too – conceivably could lose ground because their district includes Jessup [Correctional Facility] as well.<\/p>\n

Pena-Melnyk believes the importance of equity overrides any parochial interest.:<\/p>\n

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “To me, it is just a fair way to count.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editorials and articles explain how the state’s new counting method will improve democracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"coauthors":[39],"class_list":["post-1186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shorts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9882,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions\/9882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1186"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}